Bench Talk

We often consider the internet an ever-expanding library of knowledge and content, but older web pages regularly fall off the content treadmill. In a study published in May 2024, the Pew Research Center found that 38 percent of web pages that existed in 2013 were no longer accessible as of October 2023.^[1] The study also found that 54 percent of Wikipedia pages link to at least one web page in their References section that no longer exists, and 11 percent of all Wikipedia references are no longer available. It’s easy to publish content to the web, but it’s also easy to take it down. Digital content has an expiration date, which creates a problem as our lives become more digitized.

Pew Research uses the term “digital decay” to describe the phenomenon of older digital content quietly disappearing. We experience the effects of digital decay when searching the web for help on a problem and find old forum posts with dead links (Figure 1) and expired image embeds. Websites, forums, and social media groups fizzle out and shut down. Social media users make their accounts private or delete them, taking all their posts off the web. Sometimes, even resources we’ve bookmarked disappear.

Figure 1: Websites declutter old material, which can sometimes lead to broken links. (Source: accogliente / stock.adobe.com)

While dead links are usually little more than an inconvenience, digital decay becomes a real problem when it happens in our own digital libraries. Consider this: Do you have an offline backup if one of your favorite musicians pulls all their music from streaming platforms?

I faced this dilemma when an artist I regularly listened to suddenly disappeared from every streaming platform and deleted their social media accounts. The artist never released physical albums, so all that remains of their musical career is a few Reddit posts wondering what happened and some fan uploads on YouTube. This experience taught me that the media I saved to streaming platforms isn’t really “mine”; I only have it on loan. iPhone users faced a similar reckoning when the viral game Flappy Bird was pulled from the App Store. If you’ve got a Flappy Bird craving, older iPhones with the game installed are available for several thousand dollars on eBay.

Digital Decay in Our Own Media Libraries

Apple famously introduced the first iPod with the tagline “1,000 songs in your pocket,” kicking off the transformation from physical to digital media libraries. Once our CD and DVD collections became MP3 and MP4 collections, streaming offered significant savings over buying everything we listen to individually and physically (Figure 2).

Figure 2: The space savings of digital music are undeniable, but I don't think scrolling will ever be as satisfying as flipping through record stacks. (Source: Selim Cayligil /Wirestock Creators/stock.adobe.com)

According to my streaming stats, I listened to songs from over 3,200 albums last year. With the typical iTunes price of $9.99 per album, a flat fee for unlimited streams saves me tens of thousands compared to buying every album. While the streaming industry is experiencing growing pains, there’s no question that music fans have more flexibility than ever before to discover new sounds and enjoy old favorites.

My Spotify library, which I have curated over the last decade, exists only on Spotify. My personal music library is a rented space where items can be removed without my knowledge. Of course, we all know our favorite artists and albums, but the obscure hidden gems we’ve collected would likely be lost if Spotify suddenly pulled the plug on its services.

Zune fans (yes, we exist!) saw this happen as Microsoft slowly sunsetted the Zune software and rolled subscribers into Xbox Music and then to Groove Music before finally shutting down Groove Music in 2017. Some users even lost songs they had purchased through platforms like Zune and MSN Music due to digital rights management (DRM) limitations on the audio files that prohibit playback outside official platforms that no longer exist. 

Going Analog to Mitigate Digital Decay

Will we still be using the same streaming platforms decades from now? Unlikely, based on how quickly these services rise and fall. In the case of movies and television, the decay happens regularly as licenses change hands and media changes platforms. In late 2023, PlayStation Store customers received an email saying that previously purchased content from Discovery would no longer be available due to licensing changes. PlayStation ended up recanting and sent an update saying user libraries won’t be affected after all, but the ordeal was a reminder that our own digital assets are not immune from digital decay.^[2]

Physical copies provide a degree of permanence for the things in your digital library that truly matter to you. Plus, we’re physical beings who enjoy physical things. Ones and zeroes can’t replicate the woody smell of an aged book, flipping through a physical photo album, or the ritual of putting on a record. The convenience of streaming and digital purchases is undeniable, but the online world is a transitory space where things only exist as long as someone else is willing to host them.

In the next installment, we’ll cover some of the considerations for physical storage mediums. While our own hardware can’t be deleted, using it depends on the availability of compatible hardware.

Sources

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears
[2] https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/